Sections

Commentaries on this Media!

Stand Up and Cheer happy ending

Many Depression-era films employed happy endings to
lift the spirits of audience members and suggest that the hard times would soon
be over. But perhaps no film from
the period offered a more fanciful conclusion than this Fox musical featuring
Warner Baxter and Shirley Temple just before she became a huge star. Its announcement that “the Depression
is over” was, of course, premature.